Hi! I started reading Home and a Half in 2018, and after all these years it never really left my mind. It’s a beautiful work, and I remember waiting and checking for an update for so long until life got in the way. I haven’t been in the fandom for years, though Voltron has a special place in my heart. Recently I started writing again and stalking my old works and bookmarks and came across the fic. I wondered if it was going to be continued? I can’t check the time stamps of your other posts explaining the situation so I’m not sure if there’s any recent updates in 2023. I’m sure me and others would love to know. I hope all is well! ¨̮
Thank you for your kind, kind words about the fic. I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it and thought of it again after years!
As for the question of whether the fic will be updated again, the answer is yes? Probably?
Unfortunately, I also left the Voltron fandom years ago, honestly before season six of the show even dropped (because of how awful the writing became), and the thought of dedicating hours upon hours to writing what would inevitably be 150k+ more words for a fandom I'm not even in anymore is kind of exhausting. I have such a tiny, itty-bitty amount of free time to enjoy my hobbies; I'd really much rather spend time writing fic for fandoms I'm currently actively part of...
However, that said, HaaH was and remains a labor of love for me, one that has very little to do with the events of the show as they ultimately unfolded, to the point that I'm almost inclined to view the entire cast of characters in the fic as original characters, for how little bearing the official canon of the series has on the fic. I'm also extremely loath to leave things unfinished, especially something that so many readers enjoyed.
So, all told... My intention is to continue working on and eventually updating Home and a Half. Since 2017, my life has been one unending parade of crazy, and I don't have the time or energy to really continue the fic right now, but it is still my intention to do so in the future!
I'm sorry I can't give a more definitive answer than that, but I hope one day soon I'll have better news!
I've just finished reading "Home and a Half" & it's so good!!! The amount of thought and care that's clearly gone into it is incredible! How you've fleshed out the world of Voltron, and especially the Galra, really sets the story apart. The emotions are also so (deliberately) intense. I've gone through your tag, and the bit about the Galra being fiercely protective over their young & Keith starting to subconsciously view the kids as his own really shows through in the scene where he breaks (1/?)
I got such a laugh out of this ask!
Unfortunately, I can't really say much because spoilers, but... Ah, suffice it to say maybe Lance should be careful who is listening when he starts insulting Keith. Somebody might... get the wrong impression... (Or the right impression???)
In the non-spoiler realm, on the one hand, Keith knows absolutely nothing about being Galra, so I can confirm he has zero clue about any of the expected courting etiquette. On the other hand... Can also confirm Keith knows nothing about human courtship either, so whatever dating process he ends up involved in, he would be equally entirely out of his depth. Poor thing. 😂
Hi there!!! I just finished a re-read of Home and a Half (I tend to re-read it maybe once or twice a year), and I’ve just gotta say, even though it’s been ages since I first stumbled across it back in 2017, and even though I don’t care very much for Voltron anymore, I’m still deeply, absolutely enamored with your story. Gosh, I could just gush about it for ages!!! It’s incredible!!! I love the way you depict all the characters (so vibrant and realistic and unique and endearing, so beautifully flawed with such special little quirks, so wonderfully expanded upon from what was provided by the show), I love your Galra worldbuilding (after all these years, I’ve never forgotten the line “sorry to carry the oil,” the deeply layered complexities you’ve crafted for their culture is incredible), I love your way with words and your skill in conveying emotion (I can FEEL Keith’s gripping desperation throughout the story, so tense and palpable I could barely put it down, even though I already knew every twist and turn from prior readings), and, for that matter, I love how you build tension, how you establish a story building in the background outside of the scope of the point of view character, if that makes sense (it’s so, so much fun for me to re-read the story and try to pick up on all the little clues that built up to that final moment in the latest chapter, starting all the way back in chapter 1). HaaH taught me a lot about good writing!! This story you built is something I will always hold near and dear to my heart. I’m really glad it exists <3
I'm so glad you enjoy it, and seeing someone point out the parts that I enjoyed writing the most--with the Galra culture and Keith's feelings--just makes me hum with joy.
HaaH is never far from my thoughts, and I look forward to the day I can post a new chapter!
This is both a Home and a Half question but also a general Voltron thing.
Based on your headcanons and how you view these two how do you think Lotor and Keith would get along? Y’know during that time where Lotor stays in the Castle Ship. I know Keith was off on blade stuff but I just read your Lotor headcanons and I love seeing how people think these two half-Galras with parent issues would get along.
I don’t mean this in a shipping kind of way (unless 👀👀) I’m just curious as to what you think ‘cause I really like reading your thoughts on this world and these characters.
((Side note: how do you think Dulsara and Niresh would react/interact with Lotor? I don’t say Xerci because he’s too little to have much of a reaction.))
A fun question!
I think that canon!Keith would have a very different reaction to Lotor than HaaH!Keith would have, just because of differing circumstances... Canon!Keith had all the baggage of trying to lead the team at the time when Lotor was harassing them most, and I feel like canon!Keith learned to be even more distrustful of the Galra over the course of the earlier seasons of the show (with how the Blade of Marmora was written so... ergh...), so I think he would be very harsh on Lotor and suspicious of everything Lotor might say. I feel like he would have been a very intense and >>>>>:[ third-wheel on anything Lotor and Allura tried to do together in the show lmaooo
HaaH!Keith is pretty different from canon!Keith, even though I occasionally pretend that I’m making efforts to keep the characters IC. Since HaaH!Keith learned about being Galra in a different way, and has to confront what being Galra means and how he feels about it a lot more, especially in the middle of a war against Galra who are not uniformly evil bad guys, I feel like HaaH!Keith would be at least slightly more sympathetic to Lotor’s “caught in the middle” situation. I’m not sure he’d really be any more trusting of Lotor, but I feel like he’d at least force himself to listen to what Lotor says before jumping straight to stabbing...
To be honest, I just imagine HaaH!Keith and HaaH!Lotor (despite their many similarities), not knowing how to interact with each other at all. They’re like... simultaneously embarrassed by each other’s existences but for entirely different reasons. “I swear not all half Galra are like this!” they both say, at the same time, with equal amounts of indignation in their voices. Also, just... imagine the levels of awkward the conversations could reach...
Keith: So... Somebody told me you were also a half Galra with abandonment issues and a traumatic past?
Lotor: Somebody was correct.
Keith: Rough.
Lotor: I’ve heard less accurate summaries, I suppose.
Keith: Okay, cool. Good. I mean... Not good? Bad. Very bad. ...Do you want to... maybe never talk about our feelings ever again?
Lotor: Please.
I will not actually put this dialogue into HaaH, I promise.
As for Dulsara and Niresh... I’m sort of torn between taking the realistic route, which is that according to the HaaH lore, Lotor left Galra Central Command a long time ago and has been doing his own thing without being part of the mainstream Galra Empire, so it’s unlikely that Dulsara and Niresh know anything about him other than his name and that there is a prince...
Orrrrr taking the comedy route, which is that Dulsara and Niresh are embarrassingly huge fans of The Prince™ like he’s a boy band celebrity and Keith spends many scenes in a state of absolute disgruntled grumpiness after discovering his kids charges are Lotor fans of all things, like God no, whyyyy? (“We’re Team Voltron and you want his autograph? Really???”)
An ask I got yesterday reminded me that I never posted the HaaH headcanons for Pidge like I promised, so here they are! (I’ll answer the actual ask as soon as I can with some new material instead of headcanons I already had written... oops...)
Anyway, without further ado, some headcanons for Pidge related to my fic Home and a Half!
Pidge:
- Grew up in the picture of the nuclear family: mom, dad, two kids, dog, nice upper-middle-class house in a quiet neighborhood, dinner on the table at 7:30pm on the dot… Of all the paladins, Pidge had the most stable and “average” childhood… at least on paper.
- In reality, there is not a single person in the Holt family who isn’t eccentric as fuck. Grandma Holt? May or may not still be an active intelligence agent for MI6. The dog? Woofs in Morse code. Auntie Ariana? Has actually seen the Jersey Devil. Colleen Holt? Has killed a man. If you ask Pidge, she’ll say that her upbringing was perfectly normal and she’ll genuinely mean it, but this is a consequence Pidge having no idea what “normal” even means.
Rest under the read more to save your dash:
- Not actually a girly-girl when she was young. Although they’re eight years apart and thus unlikely to be mistaken for one another, very early on Pidge got frustrated by how similar she and Matt look, and she definitely did not want to wear his tacky hand-me-down clothes, so she pitched a royal fit and insisted on wearing dresses and hairbands so that her family would have to buy Pidge all her own things. (They probably would have bought them anyway if she’d just asked calmly, but Pidge was three at the time, and they were all very impressed by her grasp of cause and effect.)
- Of course, when Matt disappeared on the ill-fated Kerberos trip, those tacky hand-me-downs ended up being some of the most important items in Pidge’s life. Even outside of infiltrating Garrison, wearing Matt’s old clothes was one of the few comforts Pidge would allow herself—when she cut her hair and put on his baggy shirts, for a second, looking in a mirror, she could almost convince herself he was still there—
- Pidge has no intention of changing the way she dresses or styles her appearance until she’s reunited with Matt and her father. After that? Well, they may not be the coolest looking things ever, but Matt does have a point that baggy t-shirts are very comfy…
- And okay, because I’m sure everyone expected this headcanon first: Pidge and gender is a surprisingly uncomplicated subject. Side note before I go further: I’m sure everyone has their own headcanons for this and none of what I say here should be taken as rejecting or invalidating any other fan’s views on Pidge. The only thing invalid in the Voltron fandom is canon. Anyway, I personally like to imagine that Pidge is very ambivalent on gender. There is so much else going on—the war, Sam and Matt being missing, freaking giant robot space cats—that sitting down and sorting out the question of “Do I identify as male, female, nonbinary, or anything else?” is just really, really low on Pidge’s to do list. Pidge thinks of Pidge as “Pidge” and even that’s rare because Pidge doesn’t sit around thinking about herself or what other people think of her.
- In fact, what strangers think is, in general, extremely low on Pidge’s radar. Although she used to be more self-conscious due to bullying from both classmates and her teachers, the combination of her parents’ consistent support and Matt’s… extreme tactics (“I’m telling you Pigeon, nanobots in their lunches will solve all your problems.” “That’s illegal, Matt.” “Nothing is illegal until you get caught.”) Pidge (mostly) overcame the phase of being affected by other people’s opinions. Who cares what strangers think? Absolutely none of them will ever be even close to as smart and talented as her family anyway. (My IQ is three times yours, your argument about my gender is literally invalid.)
- By the way, I’m using “her” simply because that’s what I’m used to seeing in the fandom and to keep the fic and headcanons consistent, but in the functional world of HaaH, Pidge answers to any pronouns and doesn’t have a preference for any set in particular over others. In fact, Pidge is used to going by different sets of pronouns coming from different people, and might be “he” to one person, “she” to another, and “they” to yet someone else. Pidge is just… Pidge.
- Again, with the war and Voltron and missing family and literally everything else going on--and the fact Pidge is far more practical than all of the rest of her fellow Team Voltron members combined--she isn’t wasting time and energy doing something as troublesome as falling in love with an alien. (“Keith, can’t your melodrama wait until after we win the war?” “My drama waits for no man.” “Then please explain how you and Lance manage to engage in synchronized dumb-fuckery at least three times a week.”) Eventually, after life has settled down and Pidge has had some time to think about it, she’ll realize that the reason she somehow managed to avoid any romantic entanglements in space isn’t because she’s just much more mature than her teammates (although this might be true)—it’s that she’s just not really interested in romantic engagements with anybody, period.
- Pidge’s one true love is discovery; she feels far more passionate about knowledge and learning new things, encountering new puzzles, and grasping new concepts than she does about anything else. In between all her creations and codes and experiments and observations, it just doesn’t feel like there’s room—or that there needs to be room—for a romantic relationship with a real person.
- Pidge will make room for friends though, if and when they insist on worming their ways into her life. She tends to be a fairly private person who has never really had a large friend group (back on Earth, before Garrison, there wasn’t anyone but Matt and her parents who really understood her, and she didn’t have much in common to discuss with children her own age), but once someone earns Pidge’s trust, she does open up and form close bonds and she will give her all to help and be there for her few, but close, friends.
- Meeting Hunk at Garrison was a huge revelation. Up to that point in Pidge’s life she had never really met any young person outside her own family with a soaring genius-level IQ that was a match for her own. Although she and Hunk bicker frequently because their approaches to science are extremely different, she’s still over-the-moon to have someone who doesn’t stare at her like she’s talking gibberish whenever she goes off on one of her tangents.
- If you ask Pidge, she will violently swear up and down that Lance never and in. no. way. reminds her of Matt, fills in for Matt in the lame-older-brother role, or helps her miss her brother just a little bit less. That did not happen, never had a chance of happening, what are you even talking about—
- But if you ask about Shiro, she will be flat-out honest and admit she totally thinks of him as Space Dad. It’s not her fault. Shiro literally hero worships Sam Holt (still to this day!!) and may or may not have taken on more of his mentor’s mannerisms in order to fill the leadership role for Team Voltron. Sometimes Shiro will say or do something and Pidge will be absolutely dumb-struck because he got that from my dad is an actual thing she has to deal with.
- “Pidge” is actually a derivative of “Pigeon.” Everyone in the Holt family has a bird-based code name. Mr. Holt is Eagle Two.
- People often get the impression that Pidge is scatterbrained because she can talk about ten different things at once and pounces on leaps in her own logic that other people just can’t follow, but her thoughts and speech are very organized. It’s not her fault you couldn’t understand her system of organization if you tried.
- Put Pidge on the spot on a subject she doesn’t know, though, and watch the awkward jump right out. (“Oh, you meant the pop band Galileo, not the person. You know, that’s really an easy mistake to make. You can hardly blame me when you stop to consider all the similarities between modern chord progression and the trajectory of supermassive objects like—”)
- And if it’s not awkward, it’s defensive. Pidge may be hyper-intelligent, but she’s still very, very young, and it’s hard not to get snappish when challenged by people whose opinions she really does care about. She has a far quicker temper than Matt (who is a “revenge is a dish best served cold” champion), a trait she shares with their mother. Colleen, in turn, blames it on her having been born in New Jersey. Pidge has flipped so many tables on the Castleship that Coran and Lance eventually went around and bolted them all down.
- Do not even so much as hint that Sam and Matt Holt might be dead instead of just missing in space. Keith is still scared after his last attempt at reasoning with Pidge about her family’s fate.
- Has a bad hoarding habit. Back on Earth she had her parents there to insist she clean her room at least once a week, but in space, things are getting a bit crazy. The Castleship closets and cabinets can hyper-condense their contents and she’s STILL running out of room for all the neat doodads and parts and scientific wonders she finds on their adventures across the galaxy. Is definitely in the “Look, there’s still a mostly clear path to the door; it’s fineee” category. It’s not like she finds it hard to let things go once she’s gotten attached to them or anything. Nope. Definitely not.
- Pidge’s mess is absolutely of the “everything has a proper place” type though. Move anything with her name on it and you will feel her wrath.
- As the only one of the Earth paladins to have technology on her when they were unexpectedly swept off to war, everyone on the ship relies on Pidge’s laptop for their monthly dose of Earth nostalgia. Good thing for them Pidge and Matt’s pirating skills put Pirate Bay to shame, and she’s got basically every Earth movie from 1980 to the present. She even has every episode of the timeless classic F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (Keith hates that show with a burning passion that even he cannot explain.)
- Speaking of technology Pidge had on Earth—every single person in the Holt family is (and has been for decades) aware of the existence of aliens. Pidge’s family tree has been involved in communications, radio wave technology, and interpreting space observations since those fields were first invented. When Earth first identified patterns of waves that obviously corresponded to alien communications going on outside Earth’s galaxy, Pidge’s great- great- grandfather was there. When world governments covered up the discovery, he was the loudest voice of dissent. Since then, the Holt family has been deeply involved in military and space operations across several countries, operating from within an oppressive system they fundamentally disagree with, using their positions of authority to monitor the Milky Way and beyond, keeping tabs on what the aliens might be saying—and what messages Earth might be inadvertently sending back.
- Of course this is top secret work—secret even from the Garrison and government where the Holts were employed. Other kids learn how to play piano and soccer; Pidge and Matt learned how to hack virtually impenetrable military databases and hide their data behind uncrackable ciphers instead.
- But the Kerberos Mission was supposed to be safe. They’d all monitored the chatter so closely—there hadn’t been anything hostile anywhere even near Earth’s galaxy, no sign at all of any technologically advanced race like the Galra in years and nothing about one little Earth mission that would disturb any other intergalactic travelers anyway… Why would they...
- Pidge is surprisingly athletic for a self-professed nerd. With youthful energy to burn and a family to save, Pidge took to Allura and Coran’s intense Altean training like a duck to water, and while she’s not quite Shiro or Keith when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, she can definitely holds up better than Hunk or Lance.
- Favorite color is actually yellow, and if Green wasn’t totally The Coolest™ lion, she’d be sort of salty about Hunk getting the Yellow Lion instead.
- Absolutely capable of cursing up a blue storm, and hasn’t been friends with Hunk quite long enough yet to remember to censor herself around him all the time like Lance does with his “Holy crow!”s. She’s trying, dammit!
- Big on pets. Gets attached to pet-shaped creatures (whether living or robotic) very easily. 110% kept the space caterpillars, who live happily free-roaming the piles of space junk in her bedroom. The space caterpillars and the space mice do not get along, however, as the space mice do not take well to having their status as the favored fuzzy team mascot squad threatened. In their micro-Cold War, which is occurring without any of the ship’s humanoid occupants being aware, the space caterpillars are currently winning.
- The caterpillars’ names are Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton.
- Remember that one post about Lance drawing angry brows on the space caterpillar and siccing it on Keith? I very much accept that as canon. Pidge was Not Happy™ when she found out what Lance had done and she is NOT letting anyone else near her caterpillars again any time soon. Is very, very careful not to let Niresh see the space caterpillars so that they don’t end up stolen right from under her nose.
- Speaking of the kids, Pidge is super awkward with them and skedaddles at the first sign of tears. Next to Allura, there is probably not any member of the team worse suited to babysitting duty. That said, as someone who has lost members of her family in the war, Pidge is probably the member of the team who most directly understands Dulsara’s anger and the children’s loss. That doesn’t mean she’s really ready to let herself sympathize with the Galra though, at least not until she finds her own family first.
- Pulls all the most bullshit moves in Monsters and Mana. Whenever the team reminiscences on the truly legendary moments from their campaigns, somehow Pidge is the star in all of them.
So here’s a Home And A Half question that’s been on my mind. Bit of a self-indulgent one but would any of the Galra kids ever call Keith... Papan?? 👀👀
Xerci I can imagine would be a yes but I’m not so sure about Dulsara and Niresh. Specifically Dulsara. Especially Dulsara.
Sorry for taking so long to answer this and then when I answer, ahhhhh...
To be honest, I’m not sure if I can fully answer this one because I don’t want to give away anything that might have pretty hefty emotional weight attached to it...
So for right now, suffice it to say, Xerci will definitely call Keith “Papan.” Keith is probably going to try to jump out the nearest air lock the first time he hears it, but he’ll learn to deal.
As for Niresh and Dulsara, I’d rather keep that--whether or not it happens--a surprise!
hi, big fan of HAAH <3 and was wondering if you had any headcanons on trans/nonbinary/intersex galra and culture relating to that?
On the one hand, yes, I have headcanons regarding these things. On the other hand most of those headcanons are plot relevant to HaaH so I don’t want to say that much because potential spoilers...
In short, I just personally see the Galra as a fully developed, sentient race and therefore I would imagine they absolutely have trans, nonbinary, and intersex individuals. Since there is so much diversity among the appearances of Galra already, I feel like there would be less social stigma surrounding gender identity issues; ultimately, I feel like “modern” Galra social status is determined by usefulness to the Empire, which generally would have nothing to do with gender identity. So I would anticipate less attention or discrimination based on gender/sex, and more based on estimation of how physically strong or bloodthirsty a person is, if that makes sense!
But understanding, shaping, and coming to love one’s personal identity is still a complicated process (and one that is central to HaaH’s overall message), so the topic of gender identity among the Galra is something that I have been planning to examine since I first dreamed up the story.
May I inquire on more details of what the kids look like? I know there’s an “appearance” section on their bios but I didn’t see anything like their hair color, hair texture, if they have irises, and stuff like that. I’m asking because I’m a very visual reader that pictures everything in my head so I was just wondering.
I’m... also kinda drawing a small doodle of Niresh and Keith right now. I’ll be posting it and tagging you when I’m done so you can be expecting that some time soon!
Also, on a side note, take your time with answering. I’m in no rush. And if you don’t wanna type all that just pointing me to parts of the fic where they’re described more would be fine. Hope you’re having a good day! Or... will have a good day if it’s morning.
Dulsara is the only one of the kids who has “hair” in the traditional “hairstyle” sense; her fur is very long and when not cut, it makes a curly mane-ish mop around her head. Her “hair” is very dark purple, near black (as are her hands and feet). Dulsara has large, bat-like ears and a small, pointed nose.
Niresh looks more like a traditional Galra with a fuzzy head crest and triangular ears similar to Thace; Niresh’s fur is very short, glassy and clear, so you can see the lilac skin beneath it; the crest is lighter in color and with slightly longer fur than the rest.
Xerci has the shortest fur of the kids, similar to a deer fawn--very short but soft and velour-like. He is like a very young child right now, so his “hair” is more peach fuzz than anything, and he’s a fairly standard Galra purple color. He has droopy deer-like ears.
Xerci has golden irises and pale yellow sclera, while Dulsara and Niresh have solid gold eyes with no visible difference between the iris and sclera (both of them were born to heavily quintessence-infused parents).
I hope that helps! And I am so excited to see the doodle!!! <3 <3 <3
